Want to participate? Here are three easy ways you can be part of the giving season kick-off:

Donate to the 2013 NTEN Challenge

We are so excited to celebrate the strength of this community, now 50,000 people stong! The 2013 NTEN Challenge will raise $50,000 to support expanded programs and continued accessibility for a diverse set of organizations in 2014. We have over 30 community champions help us celebrate – check out their fundraising pages and donate today!

Join Beth Kanter on Giving Tuesday to talk about collective philanthropy

I’m joining Beth on Tuesday, December 3rd, at 9 am Pacific for a special online video chat to talk about #GivingTuesday and collective philanthropy; I hope you’ll join us! Learn more about why Beth is supporting Giving Tuesday and RSVP to join the online chat on her blog.

Sign your organization up for Giving Tuesday

To be an official partner, you must be a registered non-profit [a 501(c)3 in the United States] with a specific #GivingTuesday initiative, or a for-profit business, school, religious or community group who commit to spearhead a project that will benefit at least one registered charity or non-profit. Families and individuals are encouraged to be generous in whatever ways matter to them, whether that means volunteering at a local charity or donating to a favorite cause. Learn more and sign up on the Giving Tuesday website.

Slideshare

I use Slideshare for my presentations and other workshop or training materials. It’s easy to use, and it makes archiving and sharing materials with attendees really simple. Column Five has a new infographic about Slideshare user data with some interesting highlights. First and very striking is the 3 billion slideviews/month number! Slideshare reminds me of YouTube in that many nonprofits and even individuals use YouTube as the online storage space for videos that they plan to embed on their website or blog and otherwise share across the web. You benefit by storing the videos in a public and popular place so those that aren’t already watching your website can still come across your video and get engaged. Slideshare, with that many views, is serving a similar purpose where users are uploading content to be stored on Slideshare that they intend to embed or share elsewhere but benefit from those on the platform coming across the material and learning more.

Another highlight is the organic search traffic that nonprofit should take more advantage of. Have you spent days putting together a presentation for your board or a potential funder that highlights your work and impact? Maybe outlines how a new program is going to make a specific change to your community or the world. Putting that presentation on Slideshare where the title and the slide material can be indexed for searches means the next time I’m online searching for “important programs to end homelessness in NYC” I find your slides, your ideas, and ways to get involved with your organization.

It’s also noteworthy the high percentage of business and organizational leaders using Slideshare. Even more reason to expect that those coming across your material there to be potential partners, donors, or volunteers. There is no need to highlight specific case studies here as Beth Kanter has, of course, already ccreated a great list!

Pinterest

wishpond’s new infographic on Pinterest user data has some interesting data but I also know far more organizations experimenting with Pinterest or even using it well already. The first thing that struck me about the Pinterest data is the stat 80% of pins are actually repinned from another board. It’s really similar to the high percentage of content on Tumblr that’s reblogged from another blog. Couple that stat with nearly 84% of the time pinning content and what that really tells me is users enjoy the site and they enjoy sharing and collecting content; they do not, however, probably want to leave the site just to look at your website.

According to the infographic, 57% of the content on Pinterest is also food related! Considering all these dynamics, I think City of Hope’s shared board collecting recipes for mushrooms as part of the Mushrooms for Hope campaign is right on target. It’s a great example of creating content that is mission-supporting, true to the audience and platform, and really creates great opportunities for people to have interaction with the organization that is valuable to them and not just part of an ask.

Are you using Slideshare or Pinterest?

How is your organization creating or sharing content on these platforms? Would love to hear your lessons and stories!

It doesn’t matter what event I am speaking at, or who the participants are in the room, I can’t think of a single time I’ve spoken about nonprofit technology topics and not had at least one hand raised in the audience to ask about the number of Facebook fans an organization “should” have, or the “best” time of day to tweet, or even the frequency of posting videos on YouTube. In the book, Beth and Katie identify a number of themes. One that really speaks to me is the point that “measurement helps nonprofits understand and improve their social networks.” Often, nonprofit leaders and staff think of data as something that helps us decide on something new (a new program, a new service, a new engagement opportunity); unfortunately, we don’t always remember that data also helps us make decisions about what we are already doing. Here’s a case study of my own!

To Link or Not to Link

Before I worked at NTEN, I managed the NetSquared program at TechSoup Global. As part of that role, I was in charge of our various social media channels, including Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. At that time, most of NetSquared’s content came from the community blog, where anyone working at the intersection of technology and social impact could create a profile and contribute to the blog with stories, case studies, and more. The content strategy was to reflect the same community focus on the blog onto our other channels, both highlighting community members’ content as well as creating a space where people could continue sharing on their platform of choice. All of that translated to tweeting out links to blog posts all the time.

Watching the metrics every week, though, it was clear we weren’t looking just for traffic to the blog. We were looking to build the same kind of group sharing on social platforms that we were seeing on the blog. We also saw that retweets as a total or an average really varied. So, we dug deeper. In an attempt to ensure that we connected the “why” of whether something was successful or not to the “what” of the content itself, I started splitting apart our metrics. Instead of watching the average or total retweets for the week, I was looking at the number of tweets that went out with a link and the number that went out without a link, and the corresponding rewteets.

Wow, that’s when things got interesting! I started to see that the more I posted without a link or retweeted someone else’s link, the more response and engagement I built within the channel (in this case, Twitter). But when I tried to push people off of Twitter and over to the blog posts, there was much less of a response. Having a better understanding of what was going on, I could make a decision about our current strategy (not just a new one for later). To ensure that our content stayed balanced, I made sure that our metrics tracking documents separated % of posts with a link from those without a link and set goals for the weekly post balance.

Get your copy!

I am giving away a copy of Beth and Katie’s book to be sure that I do my part to spread the knowledge and share the insights. But, I don’t just want to mail it someone, I want to use this as an opportunity to catalyze some peer sharing! Please leave a comment below about how you’ve used data to help make a decision about the social channels you were already using. Just getting started? Share what you’d like to try! I’ll select a comment at random to win the book and we can all win by learning from each other. (I’ll pick someone on Friday, December 7th – so hurry!)

Why the dog photo? Well, that’s my dog and he’s pretty cute, but Beth and Katie are also running a dog vs cat photo contest.

I knew it was hitting many more people than the average news story when I saw tweets, facebook posts, and other online comments coming from people in my community and network that I rarely see participating online. And just as quickly as people responded with outrage against Komen, the conversation changed to be about the women who would continue to need support and the services that help them. Breast Cancer has impacted my family, like many others, and I grew up participating in Komen’s Race for the Cure in Portland every year with my mom. Komen’s announcement changed people’s minds and it didn’t matter that they later said PP affiliate could apply for funding (whether or not they are granted will be seen then) because the “break up” was final for many.

Jumping into action, Allison Fine, Beth Kanter, Stephanie Rudat, Lisa Colton, and Lucy Bernholz starting moving beyond the updates and long conversation threads and towards a collective call to action. You can read the summary of how the free agent community came together to self-organize and create a public action as well as a full report of the lessons learned and reflections on the #TakeBackThePink campaign in this public google doc.

10 Lessons from Community-Driven Organizing

After the #TakeBackThePink twitter campaign during the Super Bowl, Beth prompted all of us to share lessons and reflections in a google doc to be captured and shared. Here are the lessons we pulled out as a group:

1. We could not plan for an event like this, however as individuals who are  unencumbered by organizational rules or policies, and that we have our own large networks of people to bring to an effort, and that we are comfortable working in a dynamic, flat, environment, we reacted very quickly and nimbly to events as they unfolded and provided avenues for action for other people angry at Komen. A core group of the organizers are fluent with a variety of social media platforms including Twitter, Pinterest (a fun opportunity to take it out for a social change spin, thought Beth!) and Facebook, plus Stephanie’s graphic design expertise. As one participant recalls, “There was an immediate sense of relatedness amongst the group conjoined by leaders.  We all saw something in the uproar and possibility for ourselves and those we care about.”
2. #takebackthepink was a particularly resonant phrase with our group because it represented the opportunity to begin to separate Komen from the color pink. As Lucy would tweet later, “Pink is a color not an org.” A fundamental part of our effort was to reestablish the primacy of women’s health over the branding concerns of a single organization. We believe we created an opportunity for a large number of people to participate in this process, and the momentum to continue the discussion moving forward.
3. There were two moments of tension during the week between a centralized approach and a network approach. The first time, the effort split in two; with one group focused on fundraising and another on advocacy and awareness. The second, a faction chose to opt out of the Super Bowl effort. Both times it was brought up that it was no longer about recouping money to PP (as that was already achieved in the first 48 hours) but was about redirecting people’s emotional responses, keeping people connected to causes and organizations even if they weren’t Komen, and demonstrating the importance of knowing what the orgs do that you support.
4. There was a flow of people in and out of the effort depending on their interest and availability. A public thread rather than the private email thread would have been more in keeping with our interest in and value of transparency. We chose the email vehicle believing that the element of surprise would be important to our efforts. It turned out not to be the case.
5. Finding the messaging middle ground in a fast changing environment was very challenging. Take Back the Pink was seen by some as Komen bashing and by others as “too nice.” We did our best to find a positive place for Super Bowl Sunday: there are a lot of organizations and way to support breast health, here are options in addition to Komen. It was harder to communicate than, “Screw Komen, fund Planned Parenthood” and it’s unclear how successful we were in explaining the shift and making the message clear.
6. We could have done a better job of looking for other hashtags in real-time and piggy-backed on them in order to weave together different conversations.
7. We developed and shone a spotlight on nonprofits and transparency, an unusual element to a discussion of pro-choice and women’s health issues.
8. Defining success in a very fluid situation was also very challenging. If fifty people retweeted with our hashtag was that success? Five hundred people? Five thousand people? An interesting model to use for comparison is Occupy Wall Street. Rather than using numeric outputs as goals, perhaps our effort, simply being and spreading, was successful. We are still wrestling with this question, although perhaps one answer is that if a single person learned about a new resource or organization that was success. Having the single largest media event of the year on the immediate horizon made for a great leverage point.
9. It would have been great to have advocacy organizations sign on as participants and partners in this event, however, when we did bump up against organizations they were unable to move fast enough with their approval processes to fully participate. This will continue to hamper the ability of organizations to work with “free agents” like us who need to meet an opportunity like this with speed, agility and a lack of concern for traditional message controls. Perhaps organizations can more fully participate in the next phase of development of the Facebook page.
10. This group is open to continuing the Facebook page and the conversation about general breast health and the array of organizations and resources available to women.  Clearly, there is a void in the digital space for being a resource to those who want to learn, contribute, volunteer, receive services but don’t know of all of the options or how to vet. Our capacity is stretched, though, we all participated in this effort as volunteers.

Observations & Reflections

Additionally, I want to pull out a few things I keep reflecting back on from the campaign and the organizing process that I think are influential to how we plan for and execute actions as community members and how we support them as organizations.

How do you evaluate and recognize “critical mass” of a free agent community? As Allison points out in her reflection post, after she created the Causes campaign and witnessed the response, she knew there was enough interest and people to do something bigger. But how did she know? How does your organization evaluate, on the fly in real-time, what critical mass is around a piece of news, an issue, a campaign, or even just an idea? How do you then say “this is it” and move to the next stage? In this case, I think critical mass was established by having more than just two or three, but actually five, six, even seven or eight people willing to jump in to help – and help by organizing and thinking and planning, not just sharing the message or plan once it was created. For organizations working on evaluating critical mass in real-time, it may be different as you would also factor in staff capacity to support the organizers from the community.

In a crisis, there are two versions of reaction: one against the perpetrator (in this case it was Komen, “how could they?”), the other in support of the victims (PP at first, and then quickly women in general). It is hard to switch the focus of a campaign after it is launched, so it’s important that you frame the story, your calls to action, and the actions themselves consistently. It was discussed openly and repeatedly on email chains and Facebook threads whether the focus was against Komen or in support of PP or even in support of women’s health. It was agreed every time that the focus was really on women’s health and redirecting people’s outrage, emotion, and attention so that instead of giving up on Komen and all breast cancer or women’s health issues, people would continue to participate, donate, and support organizations working on these issues. That’s why the resources on the TakeBackThePink wiki point to nonprofit and donor directories so people can research all the organizations working on breast cancer and women’s health, for example.

To organize and operate nimbly, you need to leave a crumb trail for others to join and follow you. This is incredibly important. It was necessary that the group collaborating on email and across multiple comment threads on Facebook create a cohesive place to refer new people when they jumped in, and a place for people to follow if they had to jump out. To the lesson above about the flow of participants in and out of the group, creating some central places to point people would support the people consistently reaching out to engage people as well as those who did not want to be involved but wanted to share the plans with others. To that end, I helped quickly create a shared google doc so that the messaging, calls to action, and other important links could be docked and shared easily. I also created a customized bit.ly link for the google doc so that sharing the information and inviting people to participate would be easy to do. Furthermore, it wasn’t just the google doc of messaging and information that was helpful, but that in the doc and on Beth’s wiki we provided direct links to the Twitter search for #takebackthepink and places to engage like the Facebook page, Allison’s Causes space, and Deanna’s Tumblr. Creating shortcuts like this by aggregating all the related links or resources together helped both the “main organizers” and all those coming in and out of the thread.

What do you think?

What other lessons or observations do you have from this campaign or others? What have you tried or experimented with? Would love to learn from you!

If you’re here in Austin, do join us!  If not, you can follow the conversation in real time on Twitter with the hashtag #crowdx.  (We’ll put up more notes after the session, too!)

Here are some of my thoughts going into the conversation and slides if you prefer engaging that way:

Crowdsourcing for Social Change

The competition we conducted as part of this panel surfaced a collection of case studies of organizations using social media in their program delivery.  You can see the full collection, and how they were voted on by the community here: http://nten.org/vote-sxswi-panel

The Value-add of Crowdsourcing: For me, the two biggest reasons to include crowdsourcing in your strategic design of community building or contests are:

1. Crowdsourcing invites diversity by encouraging anyone with an idea or interest to participate
2. Crowdsourcing levels the playing field so it isn’t just your “favorites” or those you already know that get to play

For the most part, I agree with the way the crowds voted – but, given that people were able to submit and vote at the same time, it means some groups only submitted on the very last day, not leaving much time for votes. There are also two major issues that groups need to consider when using the wisdom of the crowd voting approach:

1. Crowds are susceptible to encouragement/asks/campaigning – meaning, a group that enters and has LOTS of followers or active community members can send out an appeal for people to vote and get a big response; some say this is just playing the game.
2. Criteria is really important to consider: the crowds voting = who do you want to win this; the hosts/judges/experts voting = quality, value, innovation or alignment with competition/organizational goals

I think the most important part of designing a competition that leverages crowdsourcing is to strike a balance between too many voices, and too few.  I think you create balance by focusing the competition on the stages of:

1. Open door policy for contributing/submitting
2. Public voting process
3. Public’s favorites put to expert judges for final selection

A process like this can ensure that lots of different ideas are included but that the competition can stay true to it’s purpose or the goals of the sponsoring organization.  For example, if the crowd voted in huge numbers on a submission that didn’t necessarily fit the criteria, it doesn’t mean it should win.

The most important way to use social media in a crowdsourced process is to allow the community to use social media anyway they want! Using tools that allow reposting, sharing, emailing and so on will give anyone the options they want to push your content around the web for you.

Convincing your executive team to use crowdsourcing shouldn’t take bribery.  There are lots of examples of projects that use crowdsourcing, even this one! Their hesitancy may come from not knowing what crowdsourcing means or how it works: so show them examples, but also show how the project you are working on could benefit from crowdsourcing and how the elements of crowdsourcing align with your project goals.

Sometimes what you want to do and the tools at your disposal just don’t match. Sometimes that means crowdsourcing. It isn’t right for every project or process.  Especially when you need things to be very specific or follow tight criteria, you are working very quickly or flexibly where communication with the crowd could be difficult or time consuming (or even confusing), and when you already know what you want (be honest).

Social Media in Program Delivery

The Seattle Free School is a really interesting case study for a number of reasons:

• Social media is integral to the success of the program because it is online but it is also the mechanism for growth and community building
• Collaboration via social media has enabled the program to come together and launch
• Social media tools allowed for distribution of roles/responsibilities across the community (including garnering press coverage)

There are many ways to include social media in your work. But within the scope of crowdsourcing, there is still a range for how you can use the elements of crowdsourcing and social media tools. Three specific examples that are very different include:

• Connectipedia: a wiki-based platform that allows anyone interested in philanthropy or social impact in the Pacific Northwest (or beyond) to share research, resources, information, or data about people, places and topics.  The value of the tool grows as people value the tool and add more content.  The crowd decides and creates everything that it is.
• Ushahidi: most recently, Ushahidi adpated it’s platform for use in Haiti and Chili to let the crowd both in Haiti/Chili and outside share information and data in real time via mobiles or a web browser.
• Nature Conservancy’s photo contests: The crowd, in this case it’s one that loves nature photos, shares the pictures they love about nature and in the process grow their community.  The contest attracts lots of participants and generates great content for the organization – but more importantly provides an engaging space for the community.

Measuring success of social media in your work can be a tricky thing to do, especially as we all explore and experiment with the tools every day and many tools and processes are still very new.  Here’s 5 key steps to mapping your work towards metrics:

1. Problem: Be as specific as possible, focus on the problems you will be addressing directly (not just changing the world)
2. Strategy: Highlight the strategies that specifically address the problems (this assumes you’ve already used a process to identify your audience and goals and chosen the corresponding/appropriate tools to match)
3. Benefit: These are both tangible and intangible, and can also include things that you don’t see or expect at the beginning but develop later
4. Value: These emerge from the Strategy choices and Benefits
5. Metrics: You can identify the corresponding metrics of your tools and your actions based on what has emerged above; again some of these are basic numbers/data and others will have to be qualitative

How do you keep supporters engaged in creating change over the long haul? This is something that the 350.org campaign has done really well.  The basics include:

• Show impact in real time
• Create opportunities for iterations and involvement by community
• Embrace storytelling

Crowd vs Community

When creating a competition or open call, or any other programming/process, designed to use crowdsourcing I think the biggest issue to explore in the designing/strategy and the implementation stages is the idea of community or crowd.

A community shares values, experiences, goals, or interests in a long-term way; the crowd may share those same things but usually for only a specific time period or around a specific event.  Introducing a crowdsourcing opportunity to a community means the call to participate, the value of participation and the way participation works all need to match the modes of operation or goals of the community already in place.  When creating a crowdsourcing event for the crowd, you match the elements of the event to only your own goals, hoping/expecting that the participants will self-select out of the crowd (and probably opt-out again after the event is over).

That sounds like it is easier to creating a crowdsourcing event or call for the crowd instead of a community; and maybe it it.  But, I think there can be higher expectations and more predictable value exchange when crowdsourcing happens within an already established community.  Why? For a few reasons:

• the community has a shared context or starting place, there’s less to explain upfront
• the value and practice of contributing back to the community is probably already in place
• the community leaders or influencers have already emerged and can contribute to the crowdsourcing project’s success
• the crowdsourcing event or project can add to the value and collaboration of the community’s growth and long-term goals

I’m really interested in the dynamics for both crowdsourcing and campaigning between communities and crowds.  Looking forward to exploring all these topics in the session today and in future blog posts!

What do you think?

Social Media for Social Good

Everywhere you turn, you’re hearing about social media. Especially when it comes to fundraising. But at NTEN and NetSquared, we know that social media is good for a lot more than raising money. We know that social media can be used to change the world. That’s why we’re launching the Social Media for Social Good case study collection!

Whether you’ve run a successful advocacy campaign, integrated social technologies into your education programs or have found innovative ways to use social media to further your mission in any other way, we want to hear about it.  There is still time to submit your case study – but hurry!

Why participate?

We know that one of the best ways to learn is to hear how others have succeeded before. Submitting your case study means you can share your story with others looking to learn and explore the social media for social good space.  It also means that you’ll be entered into our competition:  We will choose 3 case studies to be featured in our session with Beth Kanter at SXSWi this March!

Vote!

Over the past month, organizations have already submitted their case studies and now it’s time for you to cast your vote! Rank your favorites to help decide which case studies are featured at SXSWi.  (Don’t worry, if you haven’t submitted yet, you can still do that, too!)

Deadline for submissions and voting is February 26th!

• Review the submissions and cast your vote today!
• Learn more and submit your case study now!

Over the last week, technology has played an unprecedented role in bringing aid to and saving lives in Haiti. Over $22 million has been raised by the American Red Cross via text message (about a fifth of total Haiti-related giving to the organization so far). And then there’s the role that Facebook and Twitter are playing.

Those social media tools, along with dozens of others, have been used to help family and friends locate one another, to direct food, clothing and medical support to specific locations, and to help direct rescue workers to individuals alive and trapped under rubble.

That’s social media for social good, and that’s exactly what NTEN and NetSquared want to highlight with Beth Kanter this spring at SXSWi.

Of course, we don’t just want to talk about Haiti — we want to highlight some amazing work from around the sector, while also building a nice little library of case studies we can all learn from. So, we invite you to share your social media for social good story. We’ll choose three to highlight in our session, and we’ll share all the stories we can on our sites and at We Are Media.

Submit your Social Media for Social Good story today!

Lesson #1: Design an action and invitation that’s doable and interesting – while focused on your goal.

Stacey Monk and I exchanged messages last week, brainstorming the idea of pulling bloggers together to support Beth’s birthday campaign.  We wanted it to be something fun and interesting, so people would want to join – a surprise party!  And we wanted it to be easy to do – write a blog post!

First, we created an open Google Doc where we put in the introduction language, so anyone that clicked through from someone’s blog or Twitter post would have context about what was happening (and included a numbered list up to 53, so people could easily see where to add their name and blog address).

Next, I sent out an invitation that included a simple explanation and invitation to join with easy steps for those interested.  When sending out an invitation, it’s important to remember that the language you use needs to be appropriate for those you’re inviting, as well as to their audience as they could easily repurpose the language or calls to action you use to more quickly and easily share/spread the campaign.  Here’s a copy of the initial email as an example:

Subject: Help wish Beth Kanter a happy 53rd!

Hi friends-

As you probably know, Monday is Beth Kanter’s birthday.  Stacey Monk and I didn’t want the day to go by too quietly so are hoping you’ll join us in making a big splash to celebrate!

Her birthday wish is to raise money for the Sharing Foundation using Causes and we think we could help her crush her goal of sending 53 Cambodian children to school by raising $530.  We’re trying to throw her an online surprise party by assembling a blogsquad of 53 bloggers to publish a post on Monday that shares how Beth has impacted your work and shares her birthday wish with your blog audience.  Of course, I hope you’ll make a gift to make her wish come true too

We’re just hoping to make her birthday super happy by making her wish come true and reminding her just how much good she does.

If you’re interested, just:

1) Write your name and blog address on the signup form here: http://bit.ly/bethbdayblogs

2) Publish your post first thing Monday morning. Include a link back to her birthday wish post at http://bit.ly/beth53

3) Pass this invite on to anyone you think might want to join us.

And don’t forget to wish her a Happy Birthday Monday on Twitter too with the tweet she’s asked us to pass along: “Happy birthday #beth53! Let’s send 53 Cambodian kids to school: http://bit.ly/beth53”

Thank you so much for your help, support and participation!

Amy (& Stacey)

To recap: our audience included bloggers in the nonprofit technology and social impact sector; our goals were to help reach Beth’s $530 fundraising goal and recruit 53 “happy birthday” blog posts reflecting on Beth’s work.  The campaign was focused on the goal and created with the audience in mind (how they behave, what they are interested in, what they could do on short notice, and how they would want to participate).

Lesson #2: Encourage participants to share, invite others and promote their own participation.

Part of using blog posts in the campaign is the strategy that in order to participate, people are promoting!  We also created and provided shortened URLs for the two links we wanted everyone to use (the link to the Google Doc where people were registering their participation: http://bit.ly/bethbdayblogs and the link to Beth’s birthday wish blog post: http://bit.ly/beth53).  Using these shortened URLs and sharing them in the invitation via email and posts on Twitter meant that others were likely to use them and easily share the campaign.

We also included the hashtag for Twitter that Beth promoted in her Birthday Wish blog post (#beth53 – review the Twitter stream for the hashtag), another way that people could find and share tweets about the surprise party easily.

To recap: we took advantage of popular techniques for sharing and networking conversations including URL shorteners and hashtags.

Lesson #3: Create compositions that allow for variations on a theme.

What was key to our approach was that we did not say where people had to post, or exactly what they had to say.  We even said that they could do something else entirely!  This meant more people were empowered to participate because they could make it their own.

Some people posted on their own blogs.  Some posted to community blogs like NetSquared.  Others posted on Facebook (using the Notes application).  Some tweeted.  And others came up with even more unique ways to get involved.  (See the Google Doc for links.)

To recap: we invited people to express themselves in the way they chose while still being part of reaching the goals.

Lesson #4: Create easy ways to track and follow the campaign.

Using the URL shorteners and hashtags made sharing tweets, blog posts and calls to action easy to post and share, but it also meant that everything was easy to follow!  We could follow the hashtag on Twitter using Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com/) and could use the tracking built into Bit.ly to track clicks on the links (http://bit.ly/) (or try doing a search using Tweetmeme).

The Google Doc that served as an information and context piece for people sharing and finding the campaign also served as the sign-up sheet for participants, so people could add their own name and blog information to the campaign details without Stacey or I having to track them down.  The email invitation also turned into a reporting mechanism as people would reply-all to share their link with others participating.

To recap: the methods for sharing and promoting the campaign were also designed to create easy ways of measuring participation and impact.

Lesson #5:  Say thanks!

What I found most rewarding in this campaign was that saying “thanks!” was part of it from the start: people’s blog posts and twitter messages were all saying thanks to Beth for ways her work had impacted their own.  It had a deep gratitude through and through.

Because of the tools mentioned above (the hashtag and URLs and Google Doc), it was easy to reply on Twitter or elsewhere to thank people for their support and participation.  As people replied to the invitation email, I could also email them directly to thank them for participating and sharing in the celebration.  Stacey and I both sent thank you emails to the full list of participants towards the end of the day, too.

To recap: saying thanks is important – we all know that.  But finding ways to say it where people are participating (if they are tweeting your campaign, thank them publicly in Twitter, for example) will only further spread and promote the campaign.

It’s been a very fun experiment and a great way to spend a Monday!

A huge thanks to my friend and colleague Stacey Monk, the woman behind Epic Change, without whom this surprise party wouldn’t have happened!  And one last thanks to Beth, for giving us a reason to come together in celebration!

NOTE:  Beth was able to smash her goal of raising $530 by getting $4,540 donated to help buy school uniforms and send Cambodian children to school via the Sharing Foundation.  We also smashed our goal of recruiting 53 bloggers, with 66 signed up and many more participating in other ways.  Thanks!

Today we are throwing an online surprise birthday party for Beth Kanter, and you’re invited!

In her birthday wish post, Beth announces that she’s trying to send 53 Cambodian children to school by raising $530.  Last week, Stacy Monk and I were chatting and thought that our community could help smash that goal by raising much more funds as well as awareness for the work the Sharing Foundation does in Cambodia.

How does it work?

We’re hoping to inspire 53 bloggers to publish a post today that shares how Beth has impacted his/her work and shares Beth’s birthday wish with his/her blog audience.  (Of course, you’re invited to make a gift to make her wish come true as well!)

What’s the point?

We’re hoping to make her birthday a very happy one by:

1. making her wish come true, and
2. reminding her how much she’s contributed to the community.

You’re Invited!

If you’d like to join the surprise party for Beth, simply follow these steps:<

• Add your name and blog address to the big list (Google Document).
• Publish a blog post about how Beth has impacted your work (be sure to include a link back to her birthday wish post: http://bit.ly/beth53).
• Wish her a Happy Birthday on Twitter, too.  Here’s a tweet you can use: “Happy birthday @kanter #beth53! Let’s send 53 Cambodian kids to school: http://bit.ly/beth53”

Thanks, Beth!

It’s hard for me to pick just one thing to talk about when it comes to the question of how Beth’s work has influenced mine, after all she is a terrific example, leader, and contributor to the nonprofit technology sector.  There’s one thing that does stand out to me and I’d like to highlight it today:

Beth is a terrific chronicler. She takes notes, constantly.  She shares those notes in real time (or as near as she can).  She’s always open to suggestions, feedback, and comments—and strategically uses those to help herself flesh out the notes as they develop into ideas and insights. When she comes up with a new thread, she finds ways of linking it to other ideas by including reference links to previous blog posts (including her own or by others) to keep track of how developments happened.

She’s a great inspiration and reminder for me in this area.  I often end up with thoughts jotted in a note on my phone, ideas to explore written in my notebook and then 5 different links bookmarked that reference the same thought – but don’t take the time to pull them all together!  I’m working on it

Thank you, Beth, for all that you do to keep the community involved in every step of your work – know it is appreciated tremendously!  And happy birthday!